ARA Review by M. D. Sanders of Crystals of Empire Trilogy

[M. D. Sanders]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, Crystals of Empire Trilogy.]

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4 out of 5 stars

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The author of Crystals of Empire Trilogy has the most magnificently insidious way of making you fond of characters you swiftly find yourself deeply regretting being made fond of. I both hate and deeply admire it. Admire because it takes honest skill: I have read books where authors try to FORCE you to like characters before doing horrible things to them in what are supposedly dramatic events to evoke emotions, only to roll my eyes at how predictable the event and lackluster the emotional response ends up being. Where this story both took me by surprise- even when there was lead up- and actually affected me. Thus the hate- because I didn't want it to happen and started feeling a growing pit in my stomach any time I started feeling close to characters from the first one on.

In which, the story is basically about a young man who has to live on and becomes a loose end after his innocent village had the misfortune of being caught in the way of what is- essentially- a medieval fantasy Hitler's plot for world domination, using corrupt crystal magic in place of ‘science’ but otherwise following the progressive social control playbook. This while doing all he can to keep himself from being as helpless as he was the day it happened in order to protect himself and others, to varying limited degrees of success... or lack thereof.

As such, a forewarning: I found it a difficult book to read, emotionally. I will only state, the author has- and properly depicts- an accurate view of some of the types of horrors that an armed force of fantasy nazi zealot types in a medieval level world would likely wreak against unsuspecting villagers. In which it is effective and well written, but... not pretty.

There are also a couple distinct though slight flaws with the work.

The author occasionally falls into a pattern of matter-of-fact statements that feel a little wooden and stilted. This happened. Then that happened. Then this happened. Then that happened. It especially becomes a problem when the author uses it in blocks of exposition that could- if not should- have been told through dialogue and character interactions... though occasionally a character acts as an exposition mule and does the same thing IN dialogue, which then just sounds unnatural.

It could use a little editing work: every once in a while I came across a word that I was pretty sure wasn't supposed to be there, or was supposed to be a different but similar sounding word.

Sometimes the dialogue fell a little... flat. Especially after particularly horrible things happened around certain relatively young characters, when they mutually respond with well thought out semi-flowery sentiments and caution instead of raw rage/despair, or argument as to their immediate plans. Other times it feels just a tad too preachy.

Then there’s presentation: the author could also stand to have someone go over the Kindle formatting again: more than a couple times one encounters a paragraph indent in the middle of a block of text showing they missed a line break, or chapter breaks in the midst of pages where they missed page breaks. (And the indents could stand to be a little smaller, but that's just personal preference- I found them a bit large for the screen of the phone I do my reading on.) Also, they could stand to make the chapter breaks a little more pronounced, as there were times it took me a moment to wonder why there was suddenly a block of text without an indent as if it were a paragraph continuing from a previous page... before noticing the diminutive chapter break heading. (Noting which, there are also a couple issues with consistency in positioning which made it appear manually done.)

And- while the independent book covers aren't all bad, except the one that's just crystals, the combined trilogy cover that just pastes them on a blank background over a handful of crystals feels... lazy. It would be infinitely better if- on deciding to make a combined volume- the author had gotten a suitable unique cover created for it. Possibly leaving the pasting of individual covers to the back cover instead.

Now I will admit: I am rating this work 4 out of 5 stars against my normal standard, in which at 3 stars I would enjoy it enough to finish but not consider it worth continuing the series, and at 5 would not only finish it but consider it potentially worth rereading at some point, and continue the series even if I couldn't get them free via library or Kindle Unlimited- where usually 4 means it's worth reading once and continuing... if I can read later books for free. However I probably will not actually continue this series even for free. Heck, I had difficulty even continuing on from the end of part one.

But it's not the author's fault, thus the reason I'm not marking it lower. Despite considering it a decent novel with a solid story, which it definitely is- and even finding it interesting enough to want to know how it ends, it simply isn't my type of fantasy. Not to say I can't appreciate stories with a bit of brutality and violence- I just prefer it involve characters I'm not attached to, where there's a bit of suspense for them but it's in wondering how- not fearing whether- they'll get out of the situation. (I can make an exception for truly fantastic writing- and the rare death played up for necessary dramatic effect- but this author has a little work to do on their dialogue, sentence structure, flow, and presentation, before they get there for me.) And unfortunately- after being trained not to get attached to characters, which are generally what underlies my enjoyment of a story- I lost much of the drive to personally continue reading it.

That said, if you appreciate realistically brutal thematically desperate and tragic fantasy, you will probably enjoy this book far more than I was able to- I just don't have the heart for it.

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